Without Hope
by Philosopher At Large
Summary: Eight Days at Gondor Regional Medical Center (ROTK, OC)
1. Chapter 1. Beset with assistance (and as...

**I.**

  
There is no hope in this. 

I measure out my distillations, record the weights and influences of each, decant them into crystalline phials of the proper hue for each element and write out the prescriptions according to the prevailing humour of each patient. Then I seal them, vessel and parchment, with the white wax and leaf-seal of the Houses of Healing, and place them in the velvet-lined slots of the carrying tray, where they gleam like dark jewels in the black recesses that cradle them. And afterwards, I transcribe all my jottings into the Ward's chronicle, neatly and clearly on the ruled pages, with the year, the day, and the hour set beside, and all the measurements laid out fairly for future Dispensarians to read. And it is all utterly, wholly, completely without purpose. 

"Lalaith! Are you done yet?" Ioreth comes in, talking before she enters my chamber -- as she always does, her voice echoing like a noisy bird's down the hallway. "I still have to go up to Healer Marach's chamber and the linen orders for the laundry aren't made up yet so I have to go _back_ downstairs to Housekeeping after and..." 

As usual she forgets _my_ honorific, though she remembers it well enough when speaking to, or of, the chief of our House. I distill sound as I distill essences, letting her gratingly-chirping tones float away like impurities from my potions. I can endure this. It is not as though there are enough people left in the city to pick and choose from, and after all, a goodwife like her is hardly likely to drop a tray full of expensive dishes! Which is more than I would dare to say of the page boys remaining to run errands for the Steward and his lords -- hulking lumps pretending to be full-grown, stamping hard with each step and deepening their voices when they speak in futile counterfeit of maturity. And were it not for her, I would have to set aside my own studies and waste precious time in this mindless work myself. 

So I suppose I should be grateful -- but I am most grateful when she at last departs, having rechecked every phial to be sure that I have seated them properly, sure that my comparative youth indicates a carelessness commensurate to the difference in our ages. (I still have not fully been able to set aside, with a scholar's detachment, her mirthfully-appalled clucking at discovering that I cannot cook even a simple stew, the chattering glee with which she disclosed this contradiction to her cohorts in the House Auxiliary, nor the regularity with which she has reminded them of this fact over the past five years, with the ritual head-shakings and expressions of humorous worry that I am allowed to concoct such dangerous substances as foxglove and nightshade to inflict on our poor patients. There are times when I swear, as I close my eyes in the refectory, that I'm surrounded by a flock of gabbling geese. (They _pinch_, too, these old biddies of the Auxiliary.) 

"Thank you, Ioreth dear," I say as the door at last closes behind her, leaving me in peace. I have improved my performance to the point that I no longer have to force the 'dear', that it no longer _sounds_ forced -- not that the silly creature ever noticed one way or the other. It is not natural to me, but it serves to make the House run smoother, like oil to the hinges of my door, and like all habits it becomes indeed a second nature, no harder or easier than making sure to use only brown ink for old Ragnor's assignments, so that he could correct over them in black, or setting the page numerals on the left side for Mistress Loriel's examinations when Lord Hathaldir insisted that we place them on the right. 

I wondered what my old teachers would say if they were living in these our times, watching us patch up men, in their prime or aged grandfathers, and half-grown boys, and even a few women, used to defending their farms like the forest-tribes of our distant forbears -- only to send them out again to further mutilation and eventual death. I cannot hearten them, either assuring them of a swift return to full health, or an end to pain; I cannot pretend that all will be well for any of us, or that their sacrifice will be of purpose; I will not betray them with bright rallying lies. --Little wonder that they prefer the company of those like Ioreth, who mother them with platitudes that weigh more than any small comforts I can give, a well-adjusted bandage or a catheter whose bronze is warmed first, little wonder that simple folk prefer simple firelit falsehoods to the complicated truths of cold daylight. 

_Cold_ ... in a half-heartbeat's panic I set my hand yet again to the seam of my robe, where a tiny phial not of glass but of drilled stone is tacked lightly inside the sleeve, just enough to keep it from jarring loose in the course of my workday, but not so tight that a single swift jerk would not pull it free. The black cylinder is Númenorean, I think: it has that strange sheen of the Ancients' crafting, and it is certainly indestructible. I tried, before entrusting my secret to its care, with a smith's iron-headed sledge on an anvil down at the armories. I would never dare to set its contents in anything that might be broken, as I would never allow it off my person. I wonder, too, what my old masters in the Healing Arts would think to see me carefully preparing and preserving a substance with no beneficial effects whatsoever, with full intent to use it upon a human being, at a time unspecified but very near in the future. 

The container is only cold because it is of dense elemental stone, not because of any special power of its contents; its stopper is of the same lightless substance (which may well not be stone, but something more arcane and wonderful still) and in further contravellation of my Healer's training I have sealed it not with the bloody scarlet of a poison, but with still more black. It cannot be seen against my uniform of dark charcoal gray if one is not already looking for it; I can reach it with my teeth, if I must. I savor its name upon my tongue: _helcallach_, 'swift ice-flame'. 

The word is as cold as unsubstantiated tradition holds its taste to be: icy, biting like the clear water of a rushing mountain stream -- and killing as swiftly. I carry it, because I have no hope. I will not die rent in the dismembering of my city, nor live the slave of some pirate chieftain, renegade of our race or foreigner, himself a slave of our Enemy, nor set my skills to the task of preserving and patching my fellow citizens to labor a little while in the gray wastelands of Mordor. --Bad enough that I must send them to die in our own green earth, before our snow-white walls, to beat back the hour that comes on like a dire-wolf, without hope of success... 

"Milady? Healer Lalaith?" I turn suddenly from the wide windows that are made to illumine my worktable, which now reveal only the drear Eastern horizon and our lost lands beyond the river. It is Faelivrin, who far more than Ioreth is still in awe of the Healer's holy powers and the sacred heritage of our House. (Ah, if only she knew...) "I'm so sorry to trouble you, milady, but you're supposed to be going to assist in chirurgery now," she bleats apologetically, as she always does whenever she is obliged to disturb someone. 

Since that is one of her appointed tasks, to go about and remind absent-minded staff of _their _duties, it seems that this would have gone by the roadside long ago, but the woman seems to take a positive relish in abasing herself. She apologizes all the while that I am getting my smock down from its hook and onto my body, all the while that I wash and debride my hands and nails, continuing while I check the level of spirits in the alembic and lock the workroom behind me, trotting along at my heels down that length of the hall that we are forced to negotiate together like a plump white duck, if a duck wore pale periwinkle-blue lace. 

Everything about Faelivrin is soft, like a duck's plumage; from her round little hands to her downy, faintly-lined face, to her mild, modulated, dulcet voice. I find myself growing inexorably louder and more precise, and more abrupt, the longer I am in her company, which is foolish, because it only makes her grow yet more groveling in her self-deprecations and excusings. Finally I reach the central staircase, where -- thank the Valar for tiny favors -- my escort must continue down the hallway to afflict other colleagues of mine. 

I rattle down the staircase as quickly as I can without thundering like one of the young porters, in the swift gait perfected during the ceaseless labours of my Apprenticeship here, not tripping on the steps' worn edges nor catching a shoe in the loosening hem of my robe -- alas, yet another need for venturing into the wilds of feral granny-land. Fortunately I am too tall for most of them to pinch my cheeks, the ones who refuse to accept my Healer status as anything but a youthful prank to be set aside when I grow bored of it and accept my presumed destiny as a future Old Gammer, learning to cook _food _and sew _fabric _and to offer _sweet _words to prosperous men that have nothing to do with the need for more expensive panoplies of custom-blown glass. 

The subsequent annoyance fills the small amount of mental ability which is not set in concentration upon navigating the stairs and which would otherwise be filled with terror at the prospect of the coming ordeal. It is not as though I am the only woman Healer, by any means -- simply the youngest, and hence fair game in their minds. After all, they would hardly dare to cluck and cackle at nonegenarian Lady Healer Emeldir, as dauntless and daunting in her own way as her famous namesake. _She _would set those young sexagenarian impudents in their places fast enough; provided, of course, that their nattering could even penetrate the intensity of her concentration upon the nature and causes of corruption. 

As I reach the final turning I slow with the long, floating strides of a champion athlete so that I do not either spin gracelessly to a hairpin halt at the end of the baluster or slide catastrophically across the foyer into anyone else who might be hastening in the opposite direction. As in all things it is a matter of will and concentration as much as it is practice and physical effort. And as usual, it is well that I chose to exercise discretion over haste, for my ultimate superior, the Warden of the Houses of Healing, is approaching. I greet him with all appropriate courtesy given the hour and the occasion, and he returns with equal graciousness. 

"Healer Lalaith. Please don't let me interrupt you." 

"Not at all, sir." His eyes are wise and compassionate, and I feel a twinge of guilt that I cannot believe as he does any more in the value of what we are doing. 

"Alchemical, is that right?" I know that our chief makes every effort to know all of his staff and that I am certainly not least among those, but still the recognition blows a breath of life on a little coal of pride that has, it seems, not been entirely extinguished by the dark. 

"Yes, sir." 

"I won't delay you further, but I do want to say that I'm _exceedingly_ impressed with the quality of your work, and of your record-keeping skills. The attention to detail is only surpassed by the care you devote to it -- I think we'll have to come up with some sort of special commemorative award to recognize a First Achievement in Ward history, possibly in the Houses of Healing -- the advent of _readable _records!" 

I confess that I blush, that I say something deprecating and silly, and that even though I know that there is no hope, I imagine myself at a recognition ceremony being hailed by my peers. I am human, after all. Excusing myself with all due propriety, I make the last few paces to my destination, where I compose myself to assist in the most grueling, miserable task to ever confront a Healer: not the inflicting of temporary pain to preserve life, not the thankless duty of informing family members of professional failure; not the healing of small children. It is not the fact that my expertise is not in cutting but blending, nor that I had, before the war came to our doors, only the dimmest memories of my Apprentice days assisting the Head Chirurgeon, that terrifies me. 

Before the doors I smooth down my white smock over my dark robes, like the ramparts of dressed stone before the great stone wedge behind us, and steel myself to enter upon my own field of battle -- to give _hope _to men dying and still more gravely hurt, when all hope is a lie, and I have none to give. And then I open the doors, and go in.   



	2. Chapter 2. Staff break, with Nazgul

**II.**

It is with a curious attention to detail that I observe the levels of hopelessness advance within myself. I had thought that the intellectual certainty of destruction was sufficient to chill the heart and mind, the simple reality of knowing Gondor doomed, and accepting it -- but now I find that there are colder deeps yet, stronger and more fiercely rushing tides to overwhelm the soul. 

The day was well enough at its beginning, with enough of a fair sky to falsely promise a dream of peace, and I had been exhausted enough at the close of the previous day's rounds to sleep without dreams myself, so my humours were well enough as well, at least to my own estimation. By midmorning, however, I was beginning to feel that same sort of prickling thunderstorm-pressure in my bones and brain that usually accompanies the onset of menses and decided it was time to take an intermission before I broke something -- or someone. (Some of it, no doubt, was due to unwontedly acute hearing and one-too-many repetitions of the subvoiced cry, "Oh no, it's Healer Gurthang!" My task was to prescribe medicine, not pretend cheerfulness, the ingrates.) 

We had our own little garden on one of the roofs, with small trees in pots and troughs of medicinal herbs and flowers. The orange firelilies were exploding in their last burst of glory before winterkill, and there was an illusion of Old Gondor as the orange-leaves rustled and the small plump fountain-dragon spat mockingly into his overflowing basin in the wall. There the Healers of the Houses were wont to remove for their own healing of mind and refreshment of body. My friend Huor of Herbalists was there, and had already kindled the hypocras beaker, so the spiced, watered wine was warm and fragrant when I filled my beaker. 

Gelmir of Bonesetters lay on one of the benches with his arm over his eyes, comatose -- to my mind, wasting all the good of the garden-space; but perhaps he found it impossible to rest under the same roof as all those who suffered beneath our feet. Mendelvor was also there, clutching his horrible concoction of burnt grains, small beer and grated cheese. He swore that it was what the heroes of former Ages had drunk to give them strength, before going into battle or setting out on great Deeds, and could cite the classics to prove it -- but we had all tasted it at one time or another and I knew of no one who had not come away convinced that either our transcriptions or our translations of the works of Westernesse were gravely flawed. 

We talked quietly so as not to waken Gelmir, and because of the glowering eastern sky. 

"So what's this I hear about Ioreth throwing your pens on the floor?" Hu shook his head, grinning. 

_"I_ threw them on the floor. And out the window, and into the hallway, and I think some of them lodged in the fan-vaults, too." 

"Well, that's what I _thought_ she said -- but surely I'd heard it wrong, so I corrected." 

"Ah! Is that what you do with our prescriptions? _'Correct'_ them? Remind me to check everything I send you from now own!" I looked ostentatiously in my sash for a stylus and brandished it warningly at him. 

"So what happened? The Wild Women of the Washery were all in an uproar." 

"Well, you know I'm sinistral, right?" 

"--No, _left," _Mendelvor said, as tradition demanded, straight-faced. 

"--and since Gaerin went down to the forts I was given a Gammer to tidy my office and generally keep me in line. Well and good, well and good. But--!" Rolling his eyes melodramatically Hu continued, "She insisted on reorganizing my desk. Scroll-weights in a stack, I can live with -- just unstack 'em. Scrap vellum in a little box? I can adjust, though it wastes time opening the box every time I want to jot something down. An odd little antiquity from the cellars to hold my seals and sealing-wax and a melting-lamp is rather nice, actually. But--! Then. She Moved. My Quills." He said this in such a deliberately ponderous and doomladen tone that I could not help laughing. 

"Poor Hu, with your feathers all ruffled!" He shook his head dolorously. 

"You laugh. I suppose you cannot help it, because of your name. But imagine: there you are, alembics happily a-bubble, and you see some odd green hue where you hadn't been sure _what_ you'd see, and you daren't look away lest you miss anything else, and you reach for your writing implement -- and it isn't there. So you fumble about, like a drunken spider, all down the table top as far as you can reach, and you find it not. So you take a quick glimpse to see if it's rolled off the edge, and it hasn't, and then you spot it, on the other side of the room, reunited with all its brothers as if they were back on the goose-wing of their birth, and there's no way you can reach it from where you are, and if you turn around you'll miss something, and you _know_ you won't remember accurately everything you did when you go to reconstruct the experiment and it's all hopeless. So you cry." 

He panted and wheezed for breath, and I said admonishingly, "Air is a very important element, Hu. Always consume at least a thousand breaths of pure _vilya_ every hour of the day. But be sure not to consume to excess, lest your wits become too airy and float away." He tried to flick dead leaves at me, but the wind defeated him. 

"At any rate, I'd just got them nicely arranged about once more, and I came back to find her gathering them up again! A sort of madness took hold of me, and I grabbed them back. I said, 'I _need _them where they are,' and _she _said, 'Now, now, don't be a brat, young man,' and something went with a bang, so that it was as though there was another Huor standing beside me shaking his head, and I was him, but it didn't make a difference to the other Huor. I started throwing them and shouting, 'Take them! Go ahead, put them in places where I can't get to them if it makes you happy! Why not out into the Circle?' and she called me a badly-brought-up foreigner and said I needed a nap and some soup." 

"Did you feel better?" He shrugged, with a rueful smile answering, "For a little bit. Then I needed to write something down and had to climb on a chair to get a quill from off the top of the bookcase." 

The hour-bell tolled, too soon for believing, and Gelvor rolled to his feet, groaning, to straighten his robes. 

"Do we have to go back?" he lamented. "I hate amputations. I've got three to do, and perhaps four. But what can I do to set a bone when there isn't anything but splinters left?" 

"They could repair that in Númenor," said Mendelvor, broodingly. "They could put mithril rods in and ruel-bone to fill the gaps and keep off corruption until it grew aright." 

"You sound like Emeldir the Ancient, going on about Westernesse." Huor had come to Gondor from Lossarnoch, and sometimes missed things. 

"Well, of course! She was my Master. And she's right." 

"About what?" 

_"Everything."_

"What, that they could store up lightning in glass and direct it to burn holes in stone? Come off it, Mendë, you don't really believe _that?"_

"Children, children," I said chidingly. "Duty's clarion doth call us down once more." 

"Aye, aye, Healer Gurthang," replied Hu with a flourish. I set my arms and brows in fierce warning. "What? I think it fits you perfectly. It would be better if you were Chirurgeons, but--" 

"All right, I've _had_ it --" and I drew my stylus again and threw it with lethal accuracy. 

"Oh, a pen! Thank you, I need them!" Hu said with glee, bending to pick it up from the shrubbery where it had bounced. I started laughing so hard I couldn't breathe, as did Mendelvor, leaning on my shoulder for support. Even in the midst of it I wondered that we could feel such mirth -- which felt so much like true mirth, though unjustified -- in the path of the storm. 

As we roared in a mad humour a shadow like a cloud seemed to pass over the sky, though there had been no clouds save in the dark East, and a note like a trumpet-call from a nightmare shivered down through the clear air, cold and thin and high like sleet to the soul. We froze where we stood, my colleagues and I, Mendelvor's hand locking onto me like a death-grip, Hu's swarthy complexion going bone-dull, our laughter choked in our throats as though all breath had been cut off by aerial poison. 

Even after the sun returned we remained still, like the storybook trolls we had disbelieved as children, caught by the dawn. I can only speak for myself, but I had heard in that shriek all my dread and formless fearing set out as though sound were dark paint to delimn every evil that might befall a mortal woman. And beyond that, a colder, crueler evil still: the crushing of _spirit, _into pain and confusion and frustrated longing for all eternity, the emptiness of a Void that longed to crush all light into itself . . . The phial in my sleeve burned my wrist with its coldness. 

"What. Was. _That --!?"_ I managed to spit out, as though the words were phlegm. Hu only shook his head, as did Gelvor, but Mendë, still clinging to me, whispered a single word. It took him several tries, his lips working without sound, as though he or we were deaf. 

"Hellhawks." He rocked a little on his heels, and swallowed hard, shivering, before he rallied, to say with a feigned rationality, "That's what they're talking about. The men on my Ward, the ones from the outer forts, when I have to pry them from under the beds at midnight. --Maybe I'll join them instead." 

"But what _are_ they?" I demanded, outraged that the world should produce such obscene surprises to appall the Wise and Learned. Gelvor shrugged. 

"Do we really want to know? Come on, back to work." As we followed him, meek and silent as ghosts, I noticed that -- though none of us had put it out -- the flames of the wine-warmer were cold and dead.   


* * *

  
NOTES:

_Gurthang _-- "Death-Iron" -- is the name of the soul-drinking sword from the legend of Turin which takes the lives of its wielders, aka _Anglachel._

_Hypocras _is the English translation of a Westron word meaning 'wine diluted to a healthful consistency and enhanced with beneficial herbal supplements, named after a legendary Healer of antiquity.' 

Mendelvor's drink is from the _Iliad. _It also is reminiscent of the compounds of proteins like dried ground whey that bodybuilders employ -- personally, I think there's an untapped market for dried ground grubs there, if they were catchily advertised in weightlifting magazines. 

_Lalaith: _"Laughter" -- the nickname of Turin's baby sister whose death due to Morgoth's bioweapon was a particularly traumatic event in the life of Hurin's son. 


	3. Chapter 3 & 4. Culture Clash, or 'Hicks ...

**III.**   


How little a thing can change so much, so swiftly! News in the streets runs as swiftly as rumour,   
and truer, as it happens: the provinces have answered the Arrows sent forth, and the people of   
Gondor are rallying to the defense of her capital. This noon we were in terror, and now that   
darkness has fallen, hope has returned to us. Soldiers from the lowlands, fierce warriors from the   
highlands, and knights from out of old stories on shining horses. I would not believe it if I did not   
see it with mine own eyes, not even with the joyful shouting and ringing of every bell in the   
Circle, but it is true -- !   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
**IV.**   


I awake this morning with a curiously drained and deadened feeling, no doubt in great   
part owing to the expenditure of the vital humours at the welcoming of our relief forces   
from the provinces last night. It would not be wrong to say that we were euphoric, and   
even ecstatic, at the news, and indulged in some of the celebratory noisemaking taking   
place in the streets. I offer no excuse for my incomprehensible behavior, save to say that a   
certain contagiousness of emotion is well-known and documented. (Heruloth the   
Twentieth Warden ascribed it to the fiery and ilmenic nature of the buoyant spirits   
causing indetectable exhalations to rise and be inhaled by others in the vicinity, but   
whether this be true or no I cannot personally prove. To the mere circumstance, however,   
I can well attest.) 

Possibly some of my present dispirit is the consequence of remembering, at a remove, and   
in the chill of the pre-dawn, the words of that obnoxious errand-boy -- who kept insisting,   
as though he were an officer of the Guard himself and not merely the son of a common   
soldier, that the incoming troops were insufficient to withstand the enemy forces   
marshalled against us and that without aid from the Horse-folk we were still doomed to   
be overrun in short order. He knew this, because he had heard so from his father, he said;   
and in the darkness of morning I too knew that he was right; but in the festivities of the   
muster it was not a popular sentiment to express. 

The refectory holds numbers of Healers and apprentices all in various stages of   
unconsciousness, from the nightwatch eating dinner before retiring, slumped over with   
exhaustion but too filled with restive force to sleep yet, to those of us who were only just   
endeavoring to remember our names and stations, all hunched over the tisane or other   
beverage of preference and thankful that the chairs and table were solidly built so that we   
do not have to trouble over matters of balance. 

Only the Band of Five from Bloodletters' are animated and alert -- but then, we all have long   
known that they were insane. There are more containers at their end than there are persons,   
and I supress a shudder. Overcoming one's natural repugnance to leeches is an essential   
requirement for every apprentice Healer, but there is such a thing as going too far in the   
opposite direction. They are madder than my mother was with her roses, trying to breed back   
some lost species mentioned in the chronicles of Westernesse as having come from the   
shores of Valinor, and the subject of their madness infinitely less attractive. 

(After being regaled for half an hour some three years ago by Althorin (and not knowing   
how to close the conversation, since I could not lie and simply say I had to be somewhere   
else) on the elegant and rythmical motions of the Common Dark in its swimming, and how   
the movement of undulation in water corresponded to the undulation of banners in the air,   
and how this indicated that water, in fact, was simply a more dense form of air -- I was   
mistaken for an interested party, if not a votary, and all of the Five are likely to collar   
me and subject me to an exposition of their latest 'discovery' at any time.) 

I wonder if anyone has warned the new assistants of their penchant for bringing _their_   
colleagues about with them, and think of one particular girl whose insufferable habits   
included (among _many_ others) the practice of taking uninvited gulps from whosever's   
beaker happened to be at hand and unhanded. (Alas, she was forwarned of Mendelvor's   
concoction, which he is now mixing away with proper carefulness as though it were a   
prescription. I suppose for him it is, at that.) This pleasant picture distracts me from the   
bleakness of the hour and the world, and so I miss part of an ongoing conversation until a   
roll of laughter from my end of the table roused my attention. 

"What was that?" I ask. Luinil, who with her spouse has just come back from a Duty   
visiting the newcome troops to assist in all those travails of life which do not cease for the   
coming of a war, congestion of the lungs, strawdust ailment, headache, bruising, and the   
like, repeats her tale: 

It seems that one of the Lossarnach yeomen had a boil which had become encysted, an   
insect bite which had not been properly tended and now was troubling him; but when   
she told him to take off his tunic so that she could determine if it needed merely lancing   
and a poultice, or more serious chirurgery, he recoiled in horror. 

" 'I'm a good lad, aye, I'll not haven a forrin wooman touchen me bare --' !" was her   
attempt at imitating the peculiarites of his speech. 

Still more bizarrely, his leader -- the village headman, apparently -- had stood by him, so   
that eventually Hathaldir had had to take his life-partner's place. They had drawn the line   
at her leaving, despite the evident discomfort of the village men at her presence while   
Hathaldir worked on the shirtless soldier, because it was a four-hand job and naturally the   
grimy newcomers could not be allowed to rummage in their kit for the necessary tools   
and supplies. After the farmboy-trooper was patched up, his leader had drawn Hathaldir   
aside while Luinil made dispense of willow-extract to the needful -- this, apparently, was   
unobjectionable. A conversation followed which at third remove was incomprehensible,   
yet likely no more so than at the original event. 

" 'But she'm yer woifeh, mhan!' " the fellow said, and poor Hath scratched his head and   
said, 'Er, yes, I know--' " We all burst out laughing at that, while Hathaldir again shakes   
his head in bemusement as he stuffs down another roll of flatbread-and-paste. (What   
paste? Better not to ask; we didn't. There had been neither butter nor fresh meat for a   
fortnight. I suspected lard and ground ham, as it mostly tasted of salt. I had touched it   
once, and would not again, preferring to sop my bread in my wine, unappetizing as that   
was, to the taste of nameless slime.) 

"Knows what?" asks a familiar voice from behind me, bringing as much cheer as another   
lighted candle to the dim refectory. 

"Ah, Huor," Luinil says with a little evident discomfort. "We were just saying that your   
countrymen are, ah, a trifle _rustic_." 

"Oh, you mean, 'Ah waun'ta greeeen stoof,' " Hu replies, switching to an exaggeration of   
a Lossarnoch accent far worse than his own had ever been, rolling his letters with   
melodramatic relish. "It's all right; I trust I am sufficiently advanced that I can tolerate   
accurate observations on my own folk when I'm not making them. You can say it --   
they're _hicks_." 

"Well, yes," Hathaldir concedes ruefully. "Though in my case it was 'ta _reid_ stoof.' " 

"Ah. And which 'red stuff' would that be? _Angvil_ or _seregon_?" 

"As it happened, neither. His village Healer uses red wine in the ear-drop mix and told   
him that the red was for its fiery nature, and hence our Talthian White simply didn't meet   
his exacting requirements. I tried to explain that the 'color' has nothing to do with actual   
'color,' and that the red in his eardrops is simply a dye, and that I didn't have time to put   
pretty tints to satisfy his rustic sensibilities which were quite without basis in fact." 

"Leaving aside the whole question of what colors actually _were_ assigned in the   
Numenorean system," murmurs Mendelvor, but we all resolutely ignore him, not being   
equal to _that_ argument before the first hour. 

"So did you end up putting in firebloom, or madder?" Hu asks sympathetically. 

"I borrowed some cheap red grappa from the garrison's stock." Hathaldir shakes his head   
again. "Tinted it up right in front of him, and he was happy." 

Mendelvor asks with interest, "How did you know that was the right prescription, if all the   
patient could give it for name was 'red stuff' ?" 

"Oh, he told me it was for ear infections, and that it roiked, ah, _reeked_ like wine gone   
sour. At that, I had him smell it. and he admitted it had the same exhalation. But that   
didn't matter -- it was not red." 

"I can't imagine our Huor in the same thought as those people," his wife remarks, passing   
the the basket of flatbread down our way. "They're like something out of one of those   
vulgar comedies you see in the Third Circle. Most of them seemed not to have proper   
weapons even -- just long _sticks_!" 

Down the far end of the table the mad folk are muttering more agitatedly; I risk a glance   
and see Apprentice Rivilin jabbing her finger over one of the beakers, and hastily look   
away. 

Innocently Hathaldir asks, "Vulgar comedies? When do you see those, my dear? And   
why don't you take me?" as though these were normal days, of normal cheer; while   
Mendelvor says, _"Sticks?_ Not spears?" 

"Well, they were pointy, but they were still _wood_. Some of them had lots of points, and   
some had little bits sticking off the sides; I can't imagine why," Luinil answers, swatting   
good-naturedly at her partner's wandering free hand as she makes the mistake of looking   
inside her roll. "-- Not in public, darling." 

"Oh, that's the High Meads Particular Beechwood Split-Tine Turner," Hu calls down from   
our end. "Particularly nasty in a fight, and fatal if it's been used for forking manure first." 

_"Farm implements?" _I am amazed. 

"Well, they're sharp, heavy, and portable -- essentially the only difference between a hay-   
fork and a spear is what you're sticking it into at the moment." 

"Urgh. _You _weren't that ignorant, were you?" 

"I flatter myself that I was never that provincial and backwatered, but I'm probably lying,"   
replies Hu, between mouthfuls. "I'm not sure that one can ever look back on oneself   
accurately -- the perspective seems to have an inevitable angle inbuilt." 

He then proceeds to regale us, and to overtop even the prior stories, with an account of   
having gone down last night to see if any of his kin were in Duke Forlong's company   
(several) and being asked to look at a company leader's scalding injury, which was   
of quite recent date. It turned out that he had burnt his hand under the tap. Hu had asked   
him why he had not turned on the cold as well, and the man had evidently not only been   
unaware that such a thing as heated running water existed, but had not recognized the   
characters that initialed 'hot' and 'cold' on either lever. 

Nor, however, had it occured to him to wonder why there should be two handles, and   
only one pipe: apparently any absurd extravagance was possible in the city, and there his   
mind stopped short. Hu points out that we should be glad that he hadn't thought the   
levers were _pump_ handles and broken the hot pipe right off; for my part I try to   
imagine someone unable to read, and lacking even the desire for literacy, and find   
myself utterly baffled. I cannot name a single individual I knew, who has not possessed   
their letters since childhood. 

At that I begin to wonder about some of the Biddies, since not all come from Minas Tirith,   
and resolve to ask them; but I do not see how anyone could function on a day to day basis   
without reading, most particularly in such a place as this. The bell rings for the first hour, and   
we all start in our places. 

"Already? Are they wrong at the Citadel?" Such a thing is unheard of. We all look, as   
one, at the tall windows of the dining hall, and see with a collective chill that the   
rectangles of sky, though still dark, hold not the darkness of night, but of a terrible fire,   
such as only rarely has the City seen, when broad daylight even is smudged over and   
obscured with poisonous smokes and exhalations. 

"I _told_ you something was wrong!" Althorin shouts -- positively _shouts_ -- from the   
midst of the Band of Five. "I said the leeches were despondent, not hibernating early!   
They _know_ there's something out-of-joint!" 

Somehow it seems strangely fitting, that the end of the world should be heralded by   
something as low and vile as a bloodsucking worm . . .   


* * *

  
NOTES:

_ilmen_ -- the upper atmosphere 

_angvil _-- "ferrous oxide, known as rust"; _seregon_ -- "stoneblood," a species of red-flowered plant. 

Regarding eardrops: a common prescription for 'swimmer's ear' is made of half vinegar, half alcohol, which dries out the ear canal and raises the acidity to a level intolerable for most bacteria. Antibiotics may be added to this base for severe or fungal infections. (A doctor told me this, rather than make out a prescription, for which I was profoundly grateful. A bottle of alcohol and a bottle of vinegar last a long time, and cost about US $2.00, and work as well as if you'd bought the same from a chemist's.) 


End file.
